Size Relativity & Bear Hugs: Virtual Book Club for Kids featuring Jez Alborough

The featured author for this month’s Virtual Book Club for Kids is Jez Alborough. A brand new author to us. We really enjoyed all the books we checked out of the library by him. I loved the fact that many of the books (like “Yes” and “Tall”) were great books for my four-year-old to start reading because the limited amount of words in the book and very descriptive pictures.

For this month, we did a activity that goes along with TWO of the Jez Alborough books that we read …

Watch Out! Big Bro’s Coming!
Where’s My Teddy?

Both “Watch Out! Big Bro’s Coming!” and “Where’s My Teddy” include the concept of size relativity. In “Watch Out! Big Bro’s Coming!” a little mouse tells Frog that Big Bro is coming and he’s as big as his outstretched arms. As the jungle animals spread the word (kinda like a game of telephone) the believed size of Big Bro get bigger and bigger because the increased size of each animals arm span. In “Where’s My Teddy?” the boy is in search of his lost Teddy and the same time a Bear is looking for his lost Teddy too. The boy finds a GIANT Teddy and the bear finds a tiny Teddy. After reading these stories the kids and I talked about how size appears different depending on your own size.

To help them understand this concept even better (… and to create a fun craft project!), we each made our own Bear Hugs.

I got this great ideas from a post called Send a Hug from Paging Supermom! All it took was some large paper (we used some from our large roll of brown butcher block paper), a pen (for the tracing), some red and pink paper (for the hearts), and scissors.

One at a time a had the kids lay down on the paper and a traced around their arms and hands. After each of us were traced we noticed how the size of the tracing were all different. We also measured the arm spans with a tape measure to not only see the difference but to see the number difference too. It was also fun to see that our arm span length measure VERY closely to our height.

It ended up being a great compliment to the books and a wonderful lesson on relativity and body size and proportions!

Do you have a Jez Alborough book? I’d love to have you join the blog hop! All you have to do is…

Pick a Jez Alborough book to read with your child!
Do any activity, craft, cooking project, or other book inspired activity that goes along with the book your chose.
Share what you did with us starting Monday, July 15th. We will have a linky up for 3 weeks where you can share any blog posts (if you are a blogger) or you can post what you did at the end of the linky post in the comments or on our Facebook wall.

I can’t wait to see all of your fabulous ideas! Thanks for participating!

For more updates and to see loads of the posts by participating bloggers, head on over and “Like”our Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook page.

Bio
Latest Posts

Laura Hutchison

Laura Hutchison (aka PlayDrMom) is a chubby kid turned competitive figure skater tween turned high school pom pon girl turned MSU Spartan turned grad student turned Mrs. HutcH turned Dr. turned Mom. She adores living in the Mitten, is addicted to Diet Coke, and firmly believes that ice cream is a main food group.